We are seeing increasing collisions between leading Chinese and Western platform businesses. For example: Since buying Uber China, Didi has continued its international moves – such as its investments in Indian Ola, American Lyft and SE Asian Grab. Jack Ma has repeatedly said that 50% of Alibaba’s revenue will be international by 2025. This, plus […]
There have been some interesting China business events this month, including the stepping down of Vanke CEO Wang Shi. He is symbolic of the first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, many of whom are now starting to retire. This is my monthly recommended China reading list. If you would like to be on this list, you can […]
Yum! China has now been spun off. And being a separate company should naturally fix many of its problems. But going forward, there are three things that still really concern me. #1 – There is no free lunch in the China restaurant business. How well you did in the past just doesn’t count for that […]
In recent years, Taobao, Tmall and other online shopping sites have created a new way for Chinese consumers to buy foreign goods directly online. This new sales channel, commonly known as haitao, has, unsurprisingly, produced a surge in online purchases of vitamins, milk powder and other products Chinese have already been buying on trips overseas. […]
I focus on the intersection of rising Chinese consumers and competitive dynamics. Basically, I try to figure out who is going to win (and lose) in the never-ending fight for increasingly wealthy and influential Chinese consumers. However I generally avoid Chinese luxury. It is impacted by too many factors – the value of the RMB, […]
Every couple of months, I hear that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is down the street at Tsinghua University in Beijing (photo above). Usually he is giving a talk to students or meeting with Beijing officials. It seems to happen pretty regularly. And it raises the question: Why is such a busy executive spending so much […]
If something hasn’t happened yet in China, there are probably good reasons why. Here are four China businesses that are frequently cited in the news as big opportunities. But I think they all fall into the category of “well, if it’s so great then why hasn’t it happened yet?”. Thus, I think they should be […]
The population of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster (also called “Jing-Jin-Ji”) will be +100M people. That’s pretty fascinating. Some thoughts on where we are and what’s coming next. The economics of Beijing as a mega-city are already fantastic. The economic output is already over 10% of China’s GDP. So this mega-city is already a big deal in […]
Apple’s success in China has been spectacular. Truly outstanding. But while the “Apple in China” story is usually told in terms of the rise (and now leveling off) of iPhone sales, it has also been just as big a success in terms of brand building. Apple today is known and loved by China’s increasingly wealthy […]
Jonathan Woetzel and I have just released a new 2017 version of our One Hour China book (here). We originally released it in 2013 and it (quite surprisingly) jumped onto the best-seller list (for China). It has more of less stayed on the best-seller list for the past three years. But a new version was […]